Engineer Pulls Trigger on 3D-Printed Gun

Michael Guslick, a Wisconsin engineer, has used a 15-year old Stratasys 3D printer and blueprints downloaded from the Internet to produce the lower receiver (also known as a frame) of an AR-15 automatic rifle.

Guslick kept a blog on his 3D printing escapades. He began his experiment by using the 3D printer to fashion a custom-made .22 caliber pistol, which incorporated the 3D printed lower receiver and a commercial upper receiver. Many online gun enthusiasts were skeptical that the 3D printed pistol could work, but Guslick says he has fired 200 rounds in testing -- a triumph that prompted him to push the limits with the AR-15 rifle.

Michael Guslick, a Wisconsin engineer, used a 3D printer and blueprints he pulled off the Internetto create the lower receiver piece of a AR-15 automatic rifle.(Source: Michael Guslick)

On his blog, Guslick says he'd been using his Stratasys 3D printer to prototype ideas for paintball guns for years. Eventually, he decided to push the technology to explore making functional parts for working firearms. Plastics have been used in firearms for producing things like grips, but they haven't much been tapped for more structural components because of durability and integrity concerns and because, well, there are some pretty serious safety implications if the manufacturing process backfires.

To test the waters for the AR-15 model, Guslick started with someone else's IGES file (from 3D printing and gun enthusiast forums) of a lower receiver and created a 75 percent scale model, which, upon inspection, looked like it was good to go.

From Guslick's blog:

Figuring that my chances with a full scale print were excellent, I decided to modify the model by strengthening two areas that I was slightly concerned about -- the front takedown pin lugs and the bolt hold catch lugs. Adding more material to the model in SolidWorks was pretty straightforward, and I finished it up by adding an integral trigger guard. I switched out the PP3DP filament for some black Bolson ABS -- after all, the "black rifle" would look a bit odd in ivory (more importantly, it's easier to see/photograph detail on dark material). After slicing the STL file, I sent it to the Stratasys and waited a few days (no speed demons, these old machines).

Guslick says his AR-15 was so successful that he uploaded the design to the Thingiverse 3D design sharing site run by Makerbot Industries. That apparently unleashed a firestorm (justified, in my opinion) about whether weapon designs should be allowed on 3D maker sites.

I think the efforts by Guslick (and others) in this area are doing a lot to push the technical boundaries of 3D printing to a place where the technology has a critical and valuable role in driving the so-called personal manufacturing revolution. However, the idea of deploying highly accessible technology to output firearms cheaply -- and without legal sanction -- is pretty frightening, given recent events and all the loopholes that can impede effective gun control.

What are your thoughts on this development? Tell us in the comments section below.

People talk of only criminals making weapons, but there are 4000 instances a day in the U.S. where guns are used to stop a crime. Only 750 times a day guns are used in criminal activity. I would say, more guns to good people! And if they have to make them themselves, why not? It is better there be more of us than more of them!

better yet. look to history and realize that there has never been an american arms dealer like that, and the man your actually telling us to see is Viktor Anatolyevich Bout a soviet arms dealer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Bout

but since the left loves communism and hates the west, they switched the sides and such so that americans would hate themselves, and not the real people, like viktor. and the various states that make weapons for sale on the black market.

in fact, the real danger is not in a reciever you can print, its in things like chavez builing the first dragunov sniper rifle factories, ak, and grenade launchers he licenses from russia. when those start heading out and over an open border, your going to wish citizens could print recievers.

even funnier... which is more dangerous? printing a reciever, then having to go all over to get parts to make it, then having to find ammunition, and then wondering, when you fire it, will it blow up...

or, a CD rom with various military manuals on unconventional warfare, incindieries, and all that kind of stuff?

the latter you can look up and read and buy openly, and learn how to put together things that green berets and others do when they dont have supplies. ranging from ignigthers, delay fuses, explosives, gelled gasoline and on and on.

now... were were all the totalitarians afraid of their fellow men when things like that were printed and traded since the 40s? oh. they didnt know about it, so they couldnt be paranoid about it.

by the way... perhaps going to the hardware store, and modifying a nail gun using a 22 cartridge would be easier? or a zip gun?

go to wiki, you can learn now to make a zip gun there and you dont need a computer, you dont need a special machine, you dont need any of that.

@chuck_Aig quoting "On the other hand, some clever soul could also whittle the thing out of a scrap of pine two-by-six, so from that perspective it's NOT that big a deal. This is mainly a "proof of concept" and nothing more. Hardly enough to get your knickers in a twist. "

your right... and if thats the case, they could go to sears and get a craftsman rig that will cut wood for them. they can put HD plastic in instead and the sears machine will cut the thing for them.

oh... and on top of it... go online and you can download the instructions and such to make you own CNC machine... (i am making one out of a set of electric micrometers... ie a CNC that can work on parts no larger than 2"x2")...

why arent they making CNC Machines and making recievers then selling them on the black market? heck, i remember back in the 70s they were selling machined versions of mac 10s.. (ie. the regular mac 10 has lots of stamped parts, but they copied them using a computer mill lath machine).

then again.. once you print it, and have all those parts, you have to put it together. ever see someone try to put a gun together who doesnt know how?

I am sorry to say that the logic here in the idea that cheaper printers will make such more accessible is kind of silly, and one would only think not through ignorance.

the ignorance of what other things can be done, and are done, and much easier to do, and so forth. ever wonder how we can produce a thousands of chemists, engineers, hobbists, EEs, and do so all over the world... and how many go out and actually use their skill to do that?

the inner city idiot (of which i grew up in a slum in ny) can barely USE a gun. you can go online and you can pull up youtube and see people in the mid west discussing shooting clusters of 10 shots in a 3 inch circle at 100 yards. meanwhile, the thug with the gun and an IQ below 100, can barely hit the broad side of a barn.

now, these same almost illiterate people are going to go out, buy a computer, install drivers, then learn autocad, get a printer machine... now, first they have to go steal a gun, to steal the money, so they can buy the machines.

and if they can do all that, they are not going to go out on the street and rob people with a custom made gun on a computer printer at home. they are going to go buy a 2 dollar water pistol and paint it.

heck... with the right knowlege, you can make a weapon that can kill a few hundred people who wouldnt know they were dead for several months, and would be no more complicated than a plant water sprayer.

you worry about teens doing this? they been making guns in machine shops since i was a kid. cool things like lipstick guns that fit into a chapstick case and fire a 22 long. its not hard...

oh.. and here is another vote for ridiculous. go get a gun, rob someone to pay for computer equipment you cant use as you have low education, to then download a plan, which will then be used ot make a gun...

why not go outside, break off an antenna, tie it to a board, get a thumbtack,and make a zip gun? its THAT easy... i saw someone in my old neghborhood make one in about 15 minutes with some rubber bands, an antenna, some wire, a thumb tack and thats it.

why would i spend a few thousand dollars and be traced, when i can just put garbage together and make it?

hey? Calthrops are easy to make, how many times you ever hear them used in a crime?

next lesson: lest outlaw yo yos, as they were originally weapons of war... and are dangerous and deadly in the right hands... in fact, as deadly as a gun in the same average distance, oh, and you never run out of ammo as the ammo comes back for the next shot... (see origins of the yo yo)

Excellent article; the awesome technical advances demonstrated by these achievements are well worth noting.

Unfortunately, it does also pose some issues that sadly through the actions of criminals (more particularly, terrorists) may indeed present new technical challenges to effective security. Not withstanding the politically correct insanity that we all must endure when it comes to security in general, it will require attention if such weapons are to be rightly screened and identified. However, more importantly proper attention to identifying the potential criminal must be first and foremost. Once again, that 3-D printed 22-caliber handgun in the carry-on is no threat until the perpetrator gets it out...

One final thought....... consider the how different the possible outcome could have been if several, or even potentially just one passenger (or the flight crew) on those 911 flights had had a 357. As it was, EVERYONE was basically defenseless.

"There is another quote worth considering here....."when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns..." . If you disarm the overall population, the criminal element will know that they will have not have to be concerned whether Mr Smith in the house down the street will meet their home invasion with a 12-gauge. I still cannot understand why pepople just don't get it.!? In every case where concealed-carry laws are passed, the violent crime rate goes DOWN..... not up. In cities with the strictest gun laws, violent crime is through the roof.

Stop swallowing the typical liberal tripe and use the brain that GOD gave you! Actually look up the stats; logic and reason might just open your eyes.

As so many have posted before, it's far easier to purchase a gun that to print out pieces that are still going to beed metal parts to be functional. Criminals have other things on their minds than how to make a gun completely out of plastic. Even if you could make the barrel and slide out of plastic, you still need springs. Those have to be metal.

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